


Woke Up Like This

by Mireille



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 03:43:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20039365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: So when you're slightly drunk on some alien booze that can outpace the super serum's attempts to sober you up, and your team-mate/friend/crush points out a tacky superhero-themed wedding chapel that's clearly a violation of your team's intellectual property, the correct choice is to get some joke "wedding" photos taken, right?Except then maybe it's not a joke, after all.





	Woke Up Like This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/gifts).

> This exists in a universe where The Avengers (2012) happened, and then... none of the rest of that. A universe made up of about 87% fanon and 13% stuff "it seemed like fun to me." 
> 
> It's also for Celli, who prompted me for a "woke up married" fic several months ago. <3

****

It took a minute for Steve to realize that he was hung over.

In his defense, he wasn't used to being able to get drunk. Also in his defense, his head was pounding, his mouth felt like it was full of sand (and tasted like the sand had been used as a camel paddock), and he was fairly certain that if he moved, even slightly, he was going to be sick--all of which made thinking difficult.

He wasn't used to any of that, either. A headache that bad, these days, usually meant that something the size of a school bus had been dropped on him, and all he'd done last night was let Tony show him a little of the local nightlife. 

Steve had been planning to head straight back to New York after they'd concluded their mission, but everyone else had overruled him. 

"Come on," Clint had argued, "we're in Madripoor, and for once, they like us here. We should totally take advantage of it." 

"You could come here any time you wanted," Natasha had told him. "Even if they don't like Clint Barton, you have at least four other passports."

"Yeah, but we're already here. _And_ we stopped those tentacle monsters without much property damage, so there's still a town to paint red."

Steve could have left them to their fun and gone back home. Nobody would have even been all that surprised. Madripoor was known for lawlessness, shady deals, wild nightlife, gambling, hedonism--who'd be shocked that Captain America preferred to go home and settle in with a book? 

And he honestly would have. Steve liked a good poker game, but he wasn't much of a gambler, and even beyond that, Madripoor was definitely not his kind of place. He'd been about to say as much when Tony spoke up. 

"Yeah, c'mon, Cap," he said. "I'll take you out with me. You deserve to have a good time."

He was fairly sure that his idea of a night out and Tony's didn't have all that much overlap, but he also couldn't resist Tony when he was trying to be charming. "Nothing too wild, though," he'd warned. 

"Scout's Honor," Tony said, holding up his hand in what he probably thought was the Boy Scout salute. "We'll have the tamest night anyone ever spent here." 

Because it was _Tony's_ idea of a tame night, it had included a black-market purchase of some liquor that Thor had tasted, then proclaimed to be even stronger than Asgardian mead. Tony had given most of the case to Thor, but kept a bottle and set it in front of Steve. "If you're going to drink," he'd said, nodding toward the beer Steve had ordered, "you might as well feel it."

"Where did this even come from?" Steve asked, puzzling over the label. Not only wasn't it in a language he recognized, but he was pretty sure it wasn't even in a human alphabet. 

"I thought it better not to ask," Tony said, "but the guy I talked to swore it doesn't contain any compounds not found on Earth."

That hadn't been as comforting as Tony had seemed to think it would be, but Steve had decided to try it anyway. 

He remembered drinking some of the milky blue liquor; Tony had outpaced him by at least two drinks to one, but Steve knew better than to try to keep up with Tony and his alcohol tolerance. He remembered playing the cheap slots in the casino in their hotel. 

He remembered Tony finding it ridiculous to stand in a casino in Madripoor watching Steve play _nickel slots_. But Steve didn't want to throw money away on gambling; the equivalent of a few dollars in change was one thing, but he wasn't going to play anything with higher stakes.

Tony, on the other hand, had no problem with high-stakes games, and after another break for a few more drinks, Steve had spent a while watching him playing craps. And, embarrassingly, Tony had cajoled Steve into blowing on his dice for luck. "Ordinarily, I'd ask the prettiest girl in the room to do it," Tony had said, and if you didn't know him, you wouldn't be able to tell that he'd been drinking. 

Steve knew him, and he knew that Tony would just get more and more expansive, all the louder, brasher, and more annoying parts of his personality coming to the fore, but seeming perfectly coherent until suddenly, he wasn't. That point was still a good way off, though; Tony was just grinning at him and saying, "But let's be fair. Look at that chiseled jaw, those baby blues. You're the prettiest one here."

Steve had ended up blowing on the dice just to shut Tony up before he said anything even more embarrassing. And after that, he remembered a few more drinks, and then... nothing. Well, not quite nothing. A vague blur, a few images that didn't resolve into anything coherent. 

And now, he was hung over, which suggested that it was, despite what he'd thought, possible for him to get drunk, if the drinks were strong enough and he drank a lot of them. 

He'd made it back to his room, at least, before he passed out. 

No, wait. This wasn't his hotel room. His room was big and lavishly furnished, but this one put his to shame. 

And then, as he adjusted to the pounding behind his eyelids, Steve realized something else: he wasn't alone. He'd been so thrown by the hangover and by trying to sort out his memories of last night that he hadn't realized at first, but someone else was in bed with him. 

Someone who was plastered against his back. Someone who, unless Steve was completely mistaken about what he felt pressed against him, was a man. 

That someone stirred a little, throwing an arm over Steve. Yes, definitely a man. The arm was fair-skinned, lightly tanned with a dusting of dark hair, and Steve recognized it almost as easily as he would have recognized his own. Possibly more easily; he certainly spent a lot more time looking at it. 

He'd woken up in bed with Tony. That wasn't shocking; they'd been drinking together, they'd passed out together. That made the slowness of Steve's reactions less troubling; his subconscious had obviously been aware of who he was waking up next to. But there was something else, something that was nagging at the edges of Steve's awareness as he tried to squirm free of Tony's very octopus-like embrace, something _not right_. 

Then Steve sat bolt upright as he realized just what it was that was wrong about Tony's arm. His hand. Specifically, the third finger of his _left_ hand, which had a gold band on it that Steve had never seen him wearing before. 

The phrase "wedding ring" wandered through Steve's brain, was rejected as absurd--Tony wasn't married, wasn't even dating anyone in particular since he and Pepper had broken up a few months ago--and was dropped. 

Then Steve managed to wriggle out of Tony's grasp, sat up, and stretched. Carefully, trying not to wake Tony, he got out of bed and padded across the room toward the bathroom. 

He downed two glasses of water, feeling a good deal better now that his tongue wasn't sticking to the roof of his mouth, and then took a look at himself in the mirror. It wasn't a pretty sight.

And then he realized that something was wrong about his own reflection, something beyond the bloodshot eyes. There was a glint of gold on _his_ left hand, too: a band that looked to be a perfect match to Tony's.

"What the hell?" 

The words had so perfectly mirrored Steve's thoughts that in his still-foggy state, it took a second or two for it to dawn on Steve that it _hadn't_ been him. 

Steve would have preferred to be a little more dressed for this conversation, but at least he had his underwear on. It wasn't much, but it was better than going out to face the highly confusing consequences of the first time Steve had been drunk since Project Rebirth--and it wasn't like he'd been much of a drinker before the serum, either--completely naked. 

And, Steve realized when he came back into the bedroom and got his first look at Tony, there were worse things to be wearing than a pair of plain boxers. Things like an electric-blue T-shirt advertising the "SuperChapel," with the A resembling the Avengers' logo, and featuring a cartoon of Captain America--wearing the full suit, cowl and all, but with the addition of a lace veil and an enormous bouquet. It was one of the tackiest things Steve had ever seen. 

It was also the only thing Tony was wearing, which meant that the tactful thing to do was to look at some point just past Tony's right ear, because otherwise Steve's eyes were going to be drawn to either that terrible T-shirt, or to the vast no-go area below the hem of the terrible T-shirt. 

"Steve," Tony said when he realized he was no longer alone in the room, "what the hell did we do last night?" 

"I have no idea," Steve confessed. "I mean, I remember bits, but nothing much." 

"I thought you couldn't get drunk? I figured you might get a buzz from that alien liquor, but not, you know, wasted." 

So he'd been right; the label wasn't in any Earth language, even one Steve didn't speak. "I didn't expect that either." 

"Hangover? There are painkillers in the bathroom. Blue bottle." 

Steve shook his head and instantly regretted it. "I metabolize over-the-counter stuff too fast for it to do any good. Anyway, my headache's getting better." It must have been at least in part from dehydration, because after drinking that water, he'd started feeling much better. "I can bring you some, though, if you want?" 

"Thanks." 

It wasn't just that he thought Tony might have a headache. It was that leaving the room would give Tony a chance to get up and put some pants on, which would make the whole situation a little bit easier to cope with, at least for Steve.

When Steve came back with the bottle of painkillers and a glass of water for each of them, he discovered that Tony had, in fact, taken advantage of that opportunity, at least to the point of putting on some underwear. 

That was going to make things a little less awkward. Steve found his shirt folded over the back of a chair and put it on, buttoning it up while Tony downed a handful of capsules and gulped down the water. 

"You remember bits," Tony said, once his glass was empty. "I remember bits. Maybe we should compare notes? I remember everything, I think, until after you made me stop playing craps." 

Had he--? Yes, he remembered that now. "You'd won enough money," Steve said, "and you were bound to start losing eventually." 

"Nah," Tony said. "You were bringing me luck. How could I lose with you there?" He grinned at Steve. He'd said that last night, too, and it had been all Steve could do not to give in. But it had been getting dull, and Steve never felt at ease in a room full of the idle rich. 

Tony might be rich, but Steve didn't think he'd really ever seen him idle. Tony worked harder than anyone Steve knew--for Stark Industries, for the Avengers, for his various charitable foundations, on his own projects. And last night, he'd been working very hard to show Steve a good time. 

"I know this isn't exactly your thing," he remembered Tony saying, "but it's an experience everyone should have once." 

Where had that been? Steve tried to think. The back of a limo, and then just after that, Tony had made them pull over at--

"Okay, that's horrendous," Tony had said, pointing out the window. "Also, a clear violation of our intellectual property, or it would be if Madripoor believed in IP laws." He'd clapped his hands like an excited kid. "Let's go in." 

Steve twisted the ring on his finger, thoughtfully. "Tony," he said after a moment. "Do you remember going to a wedding chapel?" 

Light dawned on Tony's face. "Oh, yeah," he said. "That awful Avengers-themed chapel that offered to perform a joke wedding for us, for free, if we'd let them hang up a picture of us getting married."

Steve remembered Tony explaining to him last night that there were even more quickie chapels there than in Las Vegas; Madripoor had some of the most lenient marriage laws anywhere. Pretty much any two consenting adults could get married with no waiting period. If they had enough money, they didn't even have to worry about little details like currently being married to someone else.

"That explains the T-shirt," Steve said. 

Tony smirked at him. "Aww, you make a beautiful bride." 

A joke wedding, Steve thought. That was right. Tony had told him it wouldn't be legally binding; it'd just be for a laugh and a few pictures to show their friends.

Now there was a heavy gold ring on Steve's finger, and a matching one on Tony's, because of course Tony Stark would buy real jewelry for a joke. 

"And then I guess we passed out and missed our wedding night," Tony went on. "At least, I think we missed it?" He waggled his eyebrows significantly at Steve. 

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we did," Steve said. He was still wearing his shorts, and there didn't seem to be any reason to believe he'd put them back on after--well, afterward. 

"Good." Tony sounded relieved enough that it stung a little. "I was sure that if I ever got you into bed, neither of us would ever forget it." 

Steve blinked at him, his bruised ego forgotten completely. Did that mean that Tony _wanted_\--? No, of course he didn't. It was a joke, just like the wedding had been. 

Tony was up now, picking up his phone. "Something's up," he said. "I shouldn't have this many texts, even accounting for the time difference between here and New York."

Steve's glance had fallen on a piece of paper on the floor. "Tony," he said, as he bent to pick it up.

"Oh, shit, I tweeted those pictures? How did you let me tweet those pictures?" 

"One, how does anyone stop you doing anything? Two, I didn't know you were tweeting anything." Steve knew what Twitter was, but tried to ignore it, and the rest of social media, whenever possible. He had a Twitter account--the PR firm Tony had hired for the team made sure of that--and there was someone paid to manage it, which meant it was full of pictures of Steve visiting sick kids in the hospital and speaking to veteran's groups, and Steve never had to look at it. "Three, what pictures? Also, you're going to want to look at this." 

The paper had had an official look to it, and once Steve had picked it up, he'd realized why. It was a certificate recording the marriage of Anthony Edward Stark and Steven Grant Rogers, under the laws of Madripoor, on yesterday's date. 

Tony glanced at it. "It's a souvenir from the wedding chapel. You can keep it if you want."

"I don't think it's a souvenir," Steve said. "It looks pretty genuine to me." A souvenir "marriage certificate" would probably have been more ornate, and the way the form was set up did look like genuine government paperwork. 

"Shit," Tony muttered, still looking at his phone. "Shit, shit, _shit_. Half the internet is talking about our surprise wedding last night." 

"Half the internet?" Steve asked skeptically. 

"Okay, half of that part of the internet that isn't looking at porn, arguing about politics, or watching cat videos," Tony amended. "Which is still too damn many people who think we actually got married last night."

Steve waved the certificate in front of him again. "We did," he said. "At least, I think we did." 

And this was his fault. He should never have let Tony talk him into the joke wedding. It had seemed kind of funny--getting their pictures taken at a cheesy _them_-themed wedding chapel--and he'd been sure there'd been nothing mean-spirited in Tony's suggestion. Tony wasn't mocking Steve's feelings for him, because Tony was completely unaware of those feelings. He wasn't mocking the idea that two men could get married, either, because that wasn't Tony's style. 

Tony had obviously just been thinking, "This place is tacky and ridiculous, and I know Steve will think so too." Which, from what Steve could remember, had been true. 

But still, _Steve_ had obviously known how he felt about Tony, and so he shouldn't have gone along with it. His feelings weren't going to lead to anything--though he couldn't help but think about how Tony had said, "I was sure that if I ever got you into bed, neither of us would ever forget it," and wonder--but he shouldn't have turned them into a joke. 

"_Shit_," Tony said again. 

And that was when their door opened. 

"I'll have you know, I'm hurt," Clint said, from behind Natasha--who was clearly the one who had unlocked the outer door of Tony's suite; Thor would have broken it down, Bruce would have knocked, and while Clint would have picked the lock, he'd have taken long enough that one of them probably would have heard him. "_Neither_ of you asked me to be your best man?"

From the scowl on Tony's face, Clint's life was probably saved by Natasha speaking up. "What were you two thinking? This is all over the internet. Not to mention that Fury's breathing down my neck, wanting to know why I hadn't even given him a hint of it."

"What did you tell him?" Steve asked. 

"What the hell business is it of Fury's?" Tony demanded at the same time. "And come in, make yourselves at home," he said belatedly. Bruce and Thor had both stayed behind in the living room, but Clint followed Nat into the bedroom, dropping into a chair and fixing both Steve and Tony with the same mock-injured expression he'd had since the door had opened. 

Natasha didn't take a chair; she perched on the edge of the table instead. "I told him I had no idea," she said, looking Steve in the eye. "And believe me, that hurt. I hate having to admit there's something I didn't notice. I hate it even more," she added, still looking right at Steve, "when it's not true." Steve held his breath, waiting for Tony to say something about that. 

Then, to Tony, she went on, "And it's SHIELD business because SHIELD wants to know who, in the event that someone's targeting your loved ones, they need to be protecting. Not exactly necessary, in this case, but it's standard protocol."

"Not that anyone follows it," Clint said. "Unless they get found out, of course. Then they file the paperwork and pretend it just got lost in the shuffle." 

"Yeah, I don't give a crap about SHIELD protocol," Tony said. Steve started breathing again when it became obvious Tony was too annoyed at Fury sticking his nose into his private life to pay attention to anything else. "And anyway, it's a joke. It wasn't a real wedding."

"That's not what the SuperChapel people are saying," Natasha said, "or the Madripoor government, for that matter." 

"That's not what this marriage certificate says, either," Steve pointed out. 

Natasha came over and took it from him, looking it over carefully. "This looks legitimate, Tony. Whether or not you intended it as a joke, I think you and Steve actually got married last night." 

Thor must have heard her from the other room, because he appeared in the doorway, beaming at them. "That is excellent news, my friends. Come, we should celebrate!" 

Steve shook his head. "There's nothing to celebrate, Thor. Tony--I mean, we both meant this as a joke. We may technically be married, but it's not a real marriage."

"That's right," Tony said. "We were both drunk." 

"Both of you?" Natasha said, frowning. "How did that happen?"

"Tony found some alien stuff on the black market that's strong enough to affect me," Steve admitted sheepishly. Natasha and Clint had already gone their own way before Tony had produced the liquor.

"We were drunk," Tony went on, "so the chapel should have never agreed to marry us. We weren't in any condition to enter into a binding legal contract. Perfect grounds for an annulment. Probably even in Madripoor, especially since we're foreigners." 

"Aw, come on," Clint said. "Where's your respect for the sanctity of marriage?" 

"I think any arguments based on the sanctity of marriage are completely invalidated when your wedding was performed by a guy in a Hulk costume," Tony shot back. "Now, will you two please get the hell out of my bedroom? We'll be out in a minute. This isn't the kind of conversation I want to have without my pants." 

"Were we interrupting something?" Clint asked, leering at Tony. 

"Yeah. Me finding my pants." 

"Come on, Clint," Natasha said. "Let's let them get dressed. Five minutes one way or the other isn't going to make any real difference." 

"Order room service while you're at it," Tony suggested. "I'm sure you skipped breakfast in order to get straight to making fun of me, so get whatever you guys want, and about three gallons of black coffee for me." 

"Breakfast for both of us, too, please," Steve said. "You need food, Tony." 

"Married five minutes, and he starts nagging you," Clint said. Natasha must not have tried all that hard to hit him, because he was able to dodge her, but it got him out of the room. 

"We do need to talk about this," Natasha said. 

No, they didn't. Or rather, Steve and Tony did, definitely, but Steve would rather do that without the rest of the team in the room. "We will, Natasha," he promised. "Just give us a few minutes." 

She nodded and left. "What were you saying about Twitter when they came in?" Steve said to Tony as he started getting into the rest of his clothing. He should go back to his room and change, but he could do that after breakfast. Right now, he wanted a chance to talk to Tony. 

"The internet is exploding," Tony said. "Lots of people who are happy for us, lots of people who think we're degenerate perverts and this is a sign of the end times." He held up his phone to let Steve see the tweet he'd been looking at. "Photoshops of your shield to make it look like a rainbow flag, some of which aren't bad. Videos of people smashing our action figures with a hammer. You know, the usual." 

"How do they even know?"

"I tweeted a lot of pictures from last night," Tony said, opening a drawer and beginning to take out clean clothing. "Including pictures from our wedding. Which was a stupid thing to do--the whole thing was stupid, and I'm sorry about that. I mean, I was drunk, but that's not much of an excuse."

"It takes two to...uh, get married at a gimmicky wedding chapel in Madripoor," Steve said. 

"Yeah, but you were drunk too, and you're not actually used to drinking, so I still feel kind of responsible." Tony shrugged, pulling a clean shirt on. "But no worries. I'll get my lawyers on it, and by this weekend, you should be a free man again. And we'll get the PR team drafting a suitably apologetic statement."

"Apologetic?" Steve paused with his belt half-buckled, frowning at Tony. "I'm not apologizing for this. Are we--I mean, do you _want_ to let bigots think it's okay to demand an apology for two men getting married?" 

Tony blinked at him. "We're not apologizing to the bigots," he said. "We're apologizing to the significant number of people who are saying that as the first publicly out superheroes, we owed it to all the kids watching to _not_ come out in such a shitty manner. And that's going to go double when they find out we got married as a drunken joke and decided to get it annulled." 

"How are we the first publicly out heroes?" Steve said. 

"Well, marrying another man makes it a reasonable assumption that we're not straight," Tony pointed out. "And if we are, that makes us assholes for making a mockery of marriage equality. So if you are--?" Tony paused, looking at Steve significantly. 

Steve's first instinct was to say, _Of course I am_, but he remembered soon enough that this wasn't the 1940s any more, not to mention that it wasn't like Tony was going to take that information badly. He'd been assuming all morning, at the very least, that Steve wasn't straight, and that hadn't bothered him. 

"No," he said, swallowing hard. "No, I'm not." 

"Good, that makes this a little easier. And anyone who's done a little digging on me has probably figured out that I'm not, either." He shrugged. "And now, nobody's going to have to do any more digging than putting 'is Tony Stark bisexual' into Google, I guess. So there you have it. We're the first two heroes to have publicly outed themselves, and we did it in a disrespectful and potentially offensive way. We're going to have to apologize about the annulment." 

"_You_ actually want to apologize for something?"

"Hell, no, but even I can recognize that I need to." 

"We'll tell them we were drunk and thought it'd be funny to pretend to get married, even though we're not together at all?" Steve shook his head. "I don't like that. I mean, it's true, but I still don't like it." 

"What do you want to do, then?" 

Steve took a deep breath. What _did_ he want to do? Other than back up, try again, and make better decisions this time? "Did you mean it?" he asked, finally. 

"Did I mean what?" 

"Earlier, you said that if you ever went to bed with me, you didn't want to forget it. Did you mean that?" 

Tony shrugged again. "Yeah, of course I did. Go look in the mirror. Who wouldn't want to remember that?" 

Oh. Steve should have expected that. Anyone who could see past "Captain America" to "Steve Rogers," in Steve's experience, still couldn't see past Steve's appearance. 

He'd just hoped Tony would be different.

"Why?" Tony asked, when Steve didn't say anything.

"Never mind," he said, hoping he didn't look as crestfallen as he felt. "I thought maybe--" 

"What?" Tony said, his voice sharp. "You thought maybe that was something I wanted? Something I'd been hoping for? That you're one of my favorite people and I'm at least halfway in love with you already, and that was why I tried so hard to impress you last night?" 

He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end and giving him a slightly crazed look. "Which was, I admit, futile, because if you weren't impressed by Tony Stark, superhero, or Tony Stark, genius, you sure as hell weren't going to be impressed by Tony Stark, billionaire playboy. Some people would, maybe, but not you." 

"No," Steve said quietly. "I never thought that was something you wanted. If I had, I would have said something, for God's sake!" Halfway in love with him? One of his favorite people? That didn't sound like Tony was only interested in his looks. That sounded like--God, that sounded like everything Steve had been hoping for.

Steve had never actually seen Tony speechless before. It didn't last for long--maybe fifteen seconds--but for those fifteen seconds, Tony just stared at him, his mouth open.

Then, finally, just as Steve was about to apologize for crossing the line, Tony buried his face in his hands for a moment. "God," he said. "This day couldn't get more ludicrous if it tried." 

"Tony?" 

Tony looked up, and at least he didn't look particularly disturbed by Steve's confession. In fact, to Steve's surprised, he actually looked... amused? "For a genius and a reasonably smart man, we're a couple of morons," he said. "And we seem to have gotten married before going on our first date. Unless you count defeating an alien invasion as a first date? Because if you do, we've been together for over a year, and we totally didn't jump the gun by getting married now. But then again, I refuse to count anything that involves the Hulk as a date, so it doesn't matter what you think." 

He grinned at Steve, his entire face lighting up with it. "So either we haven't had our first date, or we got married on our first date. We can get an annulment on our second date, and for our third..." He shrugged. "Maybe there'll be another alien invasion?"

"We're dating now," Steve repeated. "Just like that?"

"Just like that," Tony said. "I mean, you're still interested, right? This whole PR fiasco of a marriage hasn't completely put you off the idea?" 

"Yes," he said. "Or, I mean, no, it hasn't put me off the idea. Yes, I'm still--actually, I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that _you're_ interested." 

"Steve," Tony said, in a tone Steve recognized as Tony's "why is everyone around me an idiot?" voice, "I clearly remember telling you last night that you were the prettiest person in the room."

"I thought you were just...being you. You say things like that a lot."

"Because I'm _flirting_ with you a lot, Captain Oblivious. And you weren't flirting back, so I assumed you didn't want me to take things any further."

"Escalate away," Steve said, and the heat that suddenly flared in Tony's eyes made Steve feel almost dizzy. "But maybe," he said, "not with the rest of the team just on the other side of that door?" 

"There's coffee on the other side of that door," Tony said, "and that's the only thing I want even more than you right now. So let's go out there, get on top of our little PR problem, and then send the rest of them far, far away."

"That sounds remarkably like a plan. I'm impressed."

"I learned it by watching you," Tony said, and then shook his head. "Never mind. You're not going to get the reference, and it's not worth having you look it up."

"I do know how to use Google," Steve said. But it wasn't worth looking up now, anyway, even if it would only take a few seconds. He knew that Tony's argument would be that those were seconds he could spend drinking coffee. 

When they came out, Clint made an elaborate show of looking at his watch, a gesture made slightly less effective because he wasn't wearing one. "Five minutes, you said." 

"I imagine our friends had much to discuss," Thor said, setting his empty plate down on the nearest table. 

"Discussion. Is that what they're calling it on Asgard these days?" Bruce muttered in between bites of a pastry. 

Tony clasped a hand to his chest, just over the arc reactor. "_Et tu_, Brucie?" 

"Okay," Natasha said. "Let's get serious for a moment. I know that you and the PR team are going to be the ones to handle this, but I'd prefer not to be blindsided again, thank you very much." She smiled. "I'm assuming that you two sorted things out and the tower is no longer going to be knee-deep in pining?"

"I hate it when she does that," Tony said. 

"She's a spy," Steve pointed out. "She wouldn't be much use if she didn't notice things that most people preferred she wouldn't." 

"It's not the noticing that I mind," he said. "If I didn't like to be noticed, very little of the last twenty years of my life would have happened. It's the talking to us like we're both stupid and twelve." 

"Oh, Tony," Natasha said, grinning. "You're definitely not twelve." 

"I hate all of you," Tony muttered. "Tell me you saved me some coffee." 

"We got you your own pot," Bruce said.

"I love you," Tony said. 

"Fickle, aren't you?" Steve asked, laughing. "Should I be worried?" 

"Never, my star-spangled sweetheart." Tony ignored both the groans at the over-the-top endearment and Steve's own grimace as he went over to the room service cart (the hotel staff had obviously decided it was easier to leave the cart than deal with the multiple trays of food) and poured himself a cup of coffee. 

"Anyway," Tony went on after drinking half his cup in a few quick gulps. "We're definitely getting an annulment, yeah?" He glanced at Steve. 

"Yes," Steve said. He didn't want a marriage that started out like that. At the moment, he didn't want a marriage at all, to be honest. He wanted to date Tony, to get to know him in a way other than as a fellow Avenger and friend. He wanted to kick everyone else out of the suite and take Tony back in to that oversized bed, and make sure that the next time Tony woke up in bed with Steve, he remembered every second of what had happened. 

But marriage? Way too soon to be thinking about that. And marriage under those circumstances? No. Steve wouldn't ever be able to feel good about it. Not to mention that it wouldn't even be legal once they got back home, anyway; getting married now would be a gesture at best. 

"And we're going to apologize for the way we came out. But we'll also make another statement, about our orientations--you okay with that, Steve?"

Not really, but Steve recognized the importance of it--both from the standards of managing this situation, and setting a good example--and it wasn't like waiting would make it easier. 

Besides, he didn't want this thing with Tony to get off on a worse footing than it already had. This, so far, was something they could look back on later and laugh about. If Steve tried to keep it a secret... He didn't know if Tony would end up resenting him for that, but Steve knew he'd end up resenting _himself_ for it. 

"Terrified," Steve admitted, "but it's necessary. Anyway, ever since I woke up here and found out that things had changed, I'd been telling myself I'd say something when the time was right." He smiled at Tony, letting himself forget for a second that there was anyone else in the room. "I can't think of a time that would be _more_ right." 

He didn't know what he'd expected Tony to do--make a joke, maybe?--but he just looked startled and a little pleased.

"Yeah, okay," Tony said, looking away from Steve and shifting his weight from foot to foot. "So, we'll also go public as a couple. We might want to spin it a little, imply that we got together right before our big evening out. Not outright lie, just not mention that we were both dumb enough to not see what was right under our noses until _after_ we got married." 

"I'm giving Fury the version where you're dumb," Natasha said, "because one, it's true, and two, it makes me look better." 

"I wouldn't expect anything else," Tony said. "Now. If you'll all excuse us? We need to talk to a PR team and a lawyer. And then," he said, grinning at Steve, "it seems like a shame to be technically married for another few days and not have a honeymoon." 

It was pretty impressive, Steve thought, how quickly the other four could leave a room when properly motivated. Clint had pushed the room service cart out ahead of them, which was annoying because Steve hadn't had a chance to eat yet--or to talk Tony into having something for breakfast other than black coffee (he was planning to go with the "you need to keep your strength up" angle)--but they could always call for more food later. 

Right now, they'd been married for at least twelve hours, and there was something Steve wanted to do. 

"Put your coffee down," Steve said. "And the phone." 

Tony frowned, but did what Steve asked. "I want to get the ball rolling on the annulment," he protested as Steve took two steps forward, closing the gap between them. 

"Yeah, but there's something I need to do first." Steve put his arms around Tony, leaning in to kiss him deeply. 

Tony made a little squawk of surprise, but as Steve kept kissing him, pulling Tony in to press close against his body, the surprised noises stopped, replaced by a breathy moan. Tony's hands came up between them to grab fistfuls of Steve's shirt, and as Steve pulled back a little to give them both a chance to breathe, Tony chased after him, pulling him down for another kiss. 

It wasn't until several minutes later that they finally stepped apart, both of them breathing hard and a little glassy-eyed. "Impatient, aren't you?" Tony said, finally. 

"Well, I never got a chance to kiss the bride, did I?" There hadn't been any pictures of that; it was one of the reasons Steve had no problem believing that Tony had thought it was a joke wedding. 

"I'm not the bride," Tony said. "I mean, neither of us is the bride. But if someone were to be the bride, it would definitely not be me. You saw my t-shirt; remind me who was wearing the veil?" 

Steve laughed. "Oh, yeah?" he said, scooping Tony up in his arms and carrying him into the bedroom. "What's this kind of carry called? Bridal style, isn't it?" 

"I hate you," Tony said, laughing too. "Of all the people I could have accidentally gotten married to, you are the absolute worst, Steve Rogers." 

"Yeah, I know," Steve agreed. "I'm the worst, you can't stand me, and you're counting the days until we're not married any more." He dropped Tony on the bed and grinned down at him. 

"Exactly! But," Tony said, grinning back up at him, "only because it feels a little boring to be dating my own husband."

"And we can't have me being boring," he said. "You might get tired of me and trade me in for a younger model."

"_Everyone_ is a younger model," Tony pointed out. "I could date Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Still a younger model." But he pulled Steve down onto the bed with him, and somehow, Steve got the feeling that nothing about this was going to be boring, at all.

****

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Dreamwidth.](https://mireille719.dreamwidth.org)


End file.
